This paper addresses the question of what should determine whether students’ answers to closed questions are marked as correct or incorrect in the context of formal religious education, and when their answers to open ended questions should be given more or less credit. Drawing on insights from Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne and Clare Jarmy, I argue that a combination of judged truth, and a range of well-argued cases about what ought to be believed given certain premises should constrain these (...) assessment practices. Furthermore, I argue that if we cannot find any consistent, nonarbitrary account of how judgements of correctness and merit are in fact being made in the context of formal religious education, then this tells more against current practice’s inconsistency and arbitrariness than against these constraints on how judgements of correctness and merit should be made. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

While some of Paulo Freire's readers understand his pedagogy as a rejection of any and all directive teaching methods, there are many scholars who do recognise Freire's emphasis on teacher directiveness in its appropriate form. In light of this tension between directiveness and dialogue, it seems that students of Freire must inevitably come to a crossroads: is Freire's pedagogy directive or is it not? However, even this question does not get at the more critical dilemma: if Freire's pedagogy is directive, (...) is such directiveness incompatible with Freire's overwhelming emphasis on egalitarian dialogue? This paper establishes three readings of the issue of directiveness in Freire and ultimately provides an exegetical defence of what is termed the compatibilist reading—that directive teaching, properly construed, is compatible with dialogic teaching in Freirean pedagogy. The question this paper seeks to answer is how Freire can have it both ways. In sum, Freire undeniably supports teacher directiveness and philosophically justifies directiveness as compatible with problem-posing education through his concepts of virtue education, utopia and criticality. (shrink)

Despite the scientific consensus, climate change continues to be socially and politically controversial. Consequently, teachers may worry about accusations of political indoctrination if they teach climate change in their classrooms. Research shows that many teachers are using the ‘teaching the controversy’ approach to teach climate change, essentially allowing students to make up their own mind about climate change. Drawing on some philosophical literature about indoctrination and controversial issues, we argue that such an approach is inappropriate and, given the escalating crisis (...) that is climate change, potentially dangerous. Instead, we propose integrating three well-established educational practices, Philosophy for Children, place-responsive pedagogies, and Critical Indigenous Pedagogy, to help teachers and students critically examine climate change controversy while still meeting the key goals of climate change education. (shrink)